How sweary is your trading floor? All British swearwords have officially been ranked according to offensiveness

Having previously worked at Property Week and Management Today, my areas of expertise are housing, entrepreneurs and leadership, as well as cars and the automotive industry. In 2015 I won the British Media Awards' Rising Star of the Year award.

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Yep, that word's pretty bad too (Source: Getty)

Emma Haslett

If you work on a trading floor, some of these might sound familiar - but now research by Ofcom, the communications watchdog, has ranked British swearwords according to their severity. Because it's vital we know...

No prizes for guessing what the worst word in the English language is, although two variations of one word (in the spirit of National Poetry Day, it rhymes with "duck") were also ranked among Ofcom's "strongest words", which are "highly unacceptable pre-watershed".

The list of "strong words" ("generally unacceptable pre-watershed") includes a dizzying array of descriptions for both male and female genitalia, including some particularly creative versions we had never heard of...

The ranking comes from a 122-page study commissioned by Ofcom as a means of finding out how offended people actually are by swearwords.

The survey, of

The watchdog, which surveyed 250 people, found people have become less tolerant of racist or discriminatory words (although "Ginger" is listed among the mild words), but are more likely to tolerate swearing if it reflects the "real world".

Thus, context, such as tone, delivery and time of broadcast have become more important. Something to take into account next time you find yourself venting your spleen at the world in general as sterling slides.

Ofcom said: “The findings are from new research on people's attitudes towards potentially offensive language and gestures in broadcasting, the biggest study of its kind carried out by Ofcom.

"The results are vital in supporting our broadcasting standards work to protect viewers and listeners, especially children.”